Your Right to Know

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoCourtney Hergesheimer | DispatchJack Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, revs up board members at the campaign kickoff for the property-tax levy on the May ballot.

Emeritus Director Jack Hanna revved up supporters of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium last night
with a call to hit the streets.

The zoo is requesting a permanent, 1.25-mill property tax on the May 6 ballot in Franklin
County.

The levy slogan — “It’s our zoo. Vote for Issue 6” — was unveiled at the campaign kickoff, at a
meeting of the 125-member Columbus Zoological Park Association Board. Hanna was at the kickoff and
is front and center in campaign signs.

Campaign co-chairman John Kulewicz said the levy campaign will include television and radio
spots, literature drops and word-of-mouth promotion by zoo supporters. Campaign offices, a website
and a fact sheet are in the works.

“The zoo is a major community asset, and we want to make it as available and as meaningful for
people as we can,” Kulewicz said.

The new tax would replace the current 0.75-mill levy, which expires in 2015. The current levy
brings in $18.9 million a year; the new levy would raise $32.7 million a year.

The proposed increase in the levy rate is 67 percent. But homeowners will pay twice as much as
they do now for a zoo levy if it passes. That’s because, starting this year, the state no longer
pays 12.5 percent of new levies for homeowners. The tax would amount to $44 a year per $100,000 of
property value; the current levy costs $21 a year.

Yesterday, a group called Citizens for Responsible Taxation outlined its opposition to the levy,
saying that taxes already are too high in Franklin County and the levy would bloat them even
more.

The group said its objections to the levy include that homeowners would lose that 12.5 percent
subsidy from the state. The subsidy would remain if the zoo renewed its current levy, but the zoo
wouldn’t be able to make the tax permanent.

The group also objects to the fact that residents of Delaware County, where the zoo is located,
and Muskingum County, home of another zoo property, the Wilds, don’t pay taxes to support the
zoo.